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Not to escape the world.

One that—once again—no longer holds Jericho Druke.

CHAPTER 122

THE FUNERAL IS a small affair, with no casket.

In fact, it’s not even in a cemetery. With no body, no ashes, and nothing to remember Jericho by except our words, we decide to honor him by gathering around the table in our meeting room, inside the family home.

Grandma Jessica, Burbank, Tapper, and Hawkeye are pale, and I have to admit that my own energy stores are low. Removing the nanobots from our bodily systems rather paradoxically required that we first be injected withmorebots—these programmed to find the first invaders and destroy them, then self-destruct once their mission was accomplished. The process caused our immune systems to activate, draining our energy.

As a result, Jericho’s memorial service is a quiet one. We share stories of our past victories, sadly recall a handful of failures, but in all of them, we honor our fallen friend. Bando rests under the table, and I swear his tail thumps against the floor every time Jericho’s name is spoken, remembering his friend in his own special way.

Maddy and Belinda are present as well, both of them trying to match our somber moods, even though their own mission has ended quite successfully. Detective McCarthy’s admission that kids like Chloe and Travis were used as disease vectors to spread Newbola brought with it a silver lining—Carla Spector was paid well by Khan to ensure that they remained alive.

Though they suffered untold abuses, most of them were recovered once Carla Spector’s drug ring came crashing down. Her cowardly associates—including the nefarious Abdul Aziz, who had been tasked with locating Maddy and Belinda when they escaped the hotel in Dubai—had been more than happy to talk once they were in custody. Chloe and Travis were back in the Americas and housed with foster families within a week. Belinda, meanwhile, had found a work-study program that would help lift her out of her life on the street—along with Maddy’s help and newfound friendship.

An even greater revelation was that Carla herself—as payment for her services to Khan—had been injected with the only known, truly effective vaccine against Newbola Strong. In exchange for a reduction in her sentence, she allowed some of her blood to be drawn, and the antibodies found within one of the most horrible people on earth became the salvation of the human race.

Some endings are happy, some bittersweet.

But ultimately, good has triumphed over evil.

And so the Shadow can rest.

Until next time.